It had been the end of a long day when 23 year old Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zartuska boarded Charlotte’s Lynx Blue Line train at 9:46 on August 22, 2025.
Also boarding the train, but evading paying for his ticket, was Decarlos Brown, Jr., a homeless man with fourteen run-ins with the police, awaiting trial for a new offense.
In four minutes, Iryna, who had fled the violence of the Ukraine conflict for a better life in America, would be dead, stabbed three times in the neck while looking at her cellphone by Brown, who sat behind her.
She died almost instantly.
Still wielding a bloody pocket knife, Brown was heard repeatedly shouting, “I got that white girl.”
Video captured the killing.
Brown, 34, has been charged with first degree murder.
In 2014, he was sentenced to prison for armed robbery and released in September, 2020.
In February, 2021, he was arrested for assaulting his sister, leaving her with minor injuries.
A few weeks later, he was arrested for injury to private property and trespassing.
In July 2022, he was arrested for a domestic disturbance.
Shortly after, he was arrested for injury to personal property and trespassing.
Brown’s criminal history is lengthy, reaching back to when he was a minor.
He has a documented history of mental illness. After the armed robbery, his aggressiveness intensified, resulting in his mother having him committed under court order for psychiatric observation—the diagnosis: schizophrenia.
Following his release, his aggressiveness increased still further and his mother ordered him to leave the household.
A few weeks before murdering Zarutzka, police detained Brown for misusing 911.
Despite all of this, he remained free to walk Charlotte’s streets.
Subsequently, Magistrate Teresa Stokes allowed him freedom from incarceration in exchange for his written promise to show up for a later hearing.
In a July 22 continuance hearing on Brown’s 911 misuse, judge Roy Wiggins ordered a forensic evaluation.
Unfortunately, he did not detain Brown in the meantime, a mistake with lethal consequence four weeks later.
As for the evaluation, it never happened.
In the aftermath, some on the Left argued that Brown was as much a victim of a system that failed as was Iryna. In turn, they initiated a GoFundMe account that raised $75,000 dollars to defray his legal expenses as part of the “fight against the racism and bias against our people.”
GoFundMe pulled the account.
Iryna’s murder became politicized, Trump labeling Brown a “lunatic.” Democrats, in turn, accused Trump of exploiting the tragedy for political gain.
Otherwise, Democrats have been largely silent about the murder.
In fairness, North Carolina governor Josh Stein (D) did speak out, denouncing the crime as senseless and calling for a greater police presence.
For many Democrats, however, the story didn’t fit their narrative.
Charlotte mayor Vi Lyles commented that the Charlotte transportation was safe, “by and large,” despite a recent survey reporting just 37% of Charlotte residents consider the Charlotte Area Transit System safe.
It can be argued that Progressives share responsibility for people like Brown being on the streets, abetted by black leadership and liberal media frequently engaging in racial framing that rationalizes black criminality as the offspring of white racism.
Many on the right fault Progressive advocacy of cashless bail, reduced incarceration, expunging felony records; and last, but not least, defunding the police, constitute a litany of liberal efforts more focused on criminals than the law-abiding.
Apart from the Washington Post, liberal news media, by and large, did not report the murder, consequently censoring the public’s right to know through omission, a noticeable detour from its intense coverage of the subway death of Jordan Neely by Daniel Perry, a white man.
Among media not reporting the story,
The New York Times
CNN
NPR
USA Today
Reuters
Axios
ABC News
PBS
MSNBC
(CNN did finally reference the crime, but only after the video’s release on September 5, devoting a two minute blurb to the story in its morning show).
Even Wikipedia has been caught up in the frey, one of its editors calling for the deletion of the posting titled “Killing of Iryna Zarutska.” A box message, later deleted, appeared above the post: “An editor has nominated this article for deletion.”
Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sander believes Wikipedia is now “too left” and “unreliable” (Manhattan Institute).
Brown, obviously mentally ill, should have been removed from the streets long ago in the interest of public safety.
The Brown case is not unprecedented when it comes to the American justice system’s failing the mentally ill, many of them homeless.
As Charlotte council member Edwin Peacock put it,
“If you’re constantly arresting people and they keep coming back out on the streets, what type of message is that sending?”
In 2020, former Democrat governor Roy Cooper, now running for the senate, established the “Task Force for Racial Equity in Criminal Justice,” co-chaired by then Attorney General and current Governor Josh Stein. It recommended “reimagining public safety” to “promote diversion and other alternatives to arrest,” “deemphasize” some felony crimes, prioritize “restorative justice,” and “eliminate cash bail” for many crimes (The Department of Justice (September 9, 2025).
In 2020, Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Chief Johnny Jennings declared “law enforcement, in general, is based on racism” and their department can “probably slow down” on “discretionary arrests.”
In 2020, Democrat State Senator Mujtaba Mohammed, who represents Charlotte, declared “independence from rogue police” (DOJ, September 9, 2025).
As I write, the Department of Justice has announced Brown will face federal charges, making him eligible for the death penalty. In a statement, Attorney General Pam Bondi depicted Iryna Zarutska “as a young woman living the American dream. Her horrific murder is a direct result of failed soft-on-crime policies that put criminals before innocent people.”
Ironically, the media is now weighing in. Where have they been? Is it the White House intervention and possibility of the death penalty that motivates this sudden rush to reporting in?
News comes that Paramount has now appointed an ombudsman to review bias at CBS news.
As for our courts, my thoughts drift to the late, gifted satirist Tom Wolfe of “Radical Chic” fame. His acclaimed Bonfire of the Vanities (1987) got it right—America’s highly politicized, often incompetent judicial system, is a sham.
rj
Brimmings: up from the well 